Tonight we’re seeing the new traveling production of Sweeney Todd, in which the actors provide their own accompaniment, playing all the instruments onstage.

On the one hand, I do feel some Schadenfreude at the predicament of Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who pled guilty to “disorderly conduct” in an airport restroom, seemingly having been in the process of soliciting sex from a stranger in the next stall, who just happened to be an undercover cop there specifically to […]

Last night we had dinner with Rob and Espie. As earlier reported, we first met them last September, when we went to a talk Rob was giving, and later attended a book-launch party at their house. Since then, we’ve become friends, and regularly have been getting together with them, Richard (a fellow UCSF employee whom […]

I guess I’m not completely as sanguine about having gotten that ticket, as I’ve been continuing to brood on it a little this evening. I don’t mean to imply that I’m the paragon of driving virtue–I make occasional mistakes just like anyone else, but I’m not deliberately reckless–yet on a near constant basis I witness […]

In thirty years of driving I’ve never had a traffic violation, never even been stopped for speeding (I was involved in a fender-bender a few years ago, but the circumstances were sufficiently murky that I wasn’t issued a citation for it). My streak ended last night, though, and not, I think, fairly. I was returning […]

Today Google released the latest version of the free Google Earth application, which turns the program into a virtual planetarium. Google Earth 4.2 incorporates an awesome new feature known as “Google Sky,” an astronomical component that mashes up millions of photographs of the universe with information on planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae and other astronomical features, […]

Since the creationism/intelligent design set has its own museum devoted to fantasy and myth, the Brotherhood of Fantasy Creatures (BFC) now, understandably, wants to get in on the action, and has established the (virtual) Unicorn Museum to help spread the word of the “Biblical Truth of unicorns, a creature mentioned nine times in the KJV […]

In May, Jeff and I took a two-week vacation in the Philippines; he writes briefly about it here and here; I’ll post more about it from my perspective in a separate post. The low point of the vacation, though–and of this calendar year, really–came just before our return when we learned that while we’d been […]

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, why are nearly all brands of men’s underwear sold in the following sizes (in inches): S(28-30), M(32-34), L(36-38), and so on (another alternative I’ve seen recently, possibly reflecting the obesification of American, is for the 28-30 range to be called XS, 30-32 S, 34-36 M, etc., but […]

Jeff beat me to the announcement about having updated to the new 4.0 version of Movable Type as a blogging platform. In fact, I actually updated my blog to the first release candidate of the new version even before he updated Rebel Prince. To be fair, though, my having beat him to the punch this […]